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Fort Dimanche
Fort Dimanche is a former prison in Haiti located near La Saline in Port-au-Prince that was notorious for torture and murder during the reign of François Duvalier. It was declared a monument in 1987. The original Fort Dimanche was built by the French when Haiti was a colony prior to 1804 and fell into disrepair. It became a military facility built by the US Marines in the 1920s during the American occupation of Haiti. Already prior to Duvalier it may have been used for the handling of political prisoners. During the reign of Duvalier he and his Tonton Macoutes used the facility as an interrogation center and prison to incarcerate, torture, and murder political opponents. Also people who tried to escape from the island and were caught were brought to Fort Dimanche. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, continued to use it as an instrument of terror. Crammed into tiny cells, three by three by four feet, inmates slept in shifts in their own filth. Gruel as food was placed on the floor, wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haiti
Haiti (; ht, Ayiti ; French: ), officially the Republic of Haiti (); ) and formerly known as Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island which it shares with the Dominican Republic. To its south-west lies the small Navassa Island, which is claimed by Haiti but is disputed as a United States territory under federal administration."Haiti" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Haiti is in size, the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and has an estimated population of 11.4 million, making it the most populous country in the Caribb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince ( , ; ht, Pòtoprens ) is the capital and most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 987,311 in 2015 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is defined by the IHSI as including the communes of Port-au-Prince, Delmas, Cite Soleil, Tabarre, Carrefour and Pétion-Ville. The city of Port-au-Prince is on the Gulf of Gonâve: the bay on which the city lies, which acts as a natural harbor, has sustained economic activity since the civilizations of the Taíno. It was first incorporated under French colonial rule in 1749. The city's layout is similar to that of an amphitheater; commercial districts are near the water, while residential neighborhoods are located on the hills above. Its population is difficult to ascertain due to the rapid growth of slums in the hillsides above the city; however, recent estimates place the metropolitan area's population at around 3.7 million, nearly half of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Duvalier
François Duvalier (; 14 April 190721 April 1971), also known as Papa Doc, was a Haitian politician of French Martiniquan descent who served as the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. He was elected president in the 1957 general election on a populist and black nationalist platform. After thwarting a military coup d'état in 1958, his regime rapidly became more autocratic and despotic. An undercover government death squad, the Tonton Macoute ( ht, Tonton Makout), indiscriminately killed Duvalier's opponents; the Tonton Macoute was thought to be so pervasive that Haitians became highly fearful of expressing any form of dissent, even in private. Duvalier further sought to solidify his rule by incorporating elements of Haitian mythology into a personality cult. Prior to his rule, Duvalier was a physician by profession. He graduated from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Michigan on a scholarship that was meant to train Black doctors from the Caribbean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
US Marines
The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combined arms, implementing its own infantry, artillery, aerial, and special operations forces. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. The Marine Corps has been part of the U.S. Department of the Navy since 30 June 1834 with its sister service, the United States Navy. The USMC operates List of United States Marine Corps installations, installations on land and aboard sea-going amphibious warfare ships around the world. Additionally, several of the Marines' tactical Naval aviation, aviation squadrons, primarily Marine Fighter Attack squadrons, are also embedded in Navy carrier air wings and operate from the aircraft carriers. The history of the Marine Corps began when two battalions of Continental Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Occupation Of Haiti
The United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915, when 330 U.S. Marines landed at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the National City Bank of New York convinced the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, to take control of Haiti's political and financial interests. The invasion and subsequent occupation was promoted by growing American business interests in Haiti, especially the National City Bank of New York, which had withheld funds from Haiti and paid rebels to destabilize the nation through the Bank of the Republic of Haiti in actions aimed at inducing American intervention. The July 1915 invasion took place following years of socioeconomic instability within Haiti that culminated with the lynching of President of Haiti Vilbrun Guillaume Sam by a mob angered by his decision to order the executions of political prisoners. The occupation ended on August 1, 1934, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Heat
The practice of using colours to determine the temperature of a piece of (usually) ferrous metal comes from blacksmithing. Long before thermometers were widely available it was necessary to know what state the metal was in for heat treating it and the only way to do this was to heat it up to a colour which was known to be best for the work. Chapman According to Chapman's ''Workshop Technology'', the colours which can be observed in steel are: Stirling In 1905, Stirling Consolidated Boiler Company published a slightly different set of values: See also *Black-body radiation *Color temperature Color temperature is the color of light emitted by an idealized opaque, non-reflective body at a particular temperature measured in kelvins. The color temperature scale is used to categorize the color of light emitted by other light sources ... * Incandescence References {{Reflist Metallurgy Temperature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duvalier Dynasty
The Duvalier dynasty (french: Dynastie des Duvalier, ht, Dinasti Duvalier) was an autocratic family dictatorship in Haiti that lasted almost twenty-nine years, from 1957 until 1986, spanning the rule of the father-and-son duo François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. History Direct elections, the first in Haiti's history, were held in October 1950, and Paul Magloire, an elite black Colonel in the military, was elected. Hurricane Hazel hit the island in 1954, devastating the nation's infrastructure and economy. Hurricane relief was inadequately distributed and misspent, and Magloire jailed opponents and shut down newspapers. After he refused to step down after his term ended, a general strike shut down Port-au-Prince's economy, and Magloire fled, leaving the government in a state of chaos. When elections were finally held in September 1957, François Duvalier, a rural doctor running under the National Unity Party banner, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tonton Macoutes
The Tonton Macoute ( ht, Tonton Makout) or simply the Macoute was a special operations unit within the Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. In 1970 the militia was renamed the ' (VSN, Volunteers of the National Security). Haitians named this force after the Haitian mythological bogeyman, (" Uncle Gunnysack"), who kidnaps and punishes unruly children by snaring them in a gunny sack () before carrying them off to be consumed for breakfast. History After the July 1958 Haitian coup d'état attempt against President François Duvalier, he purged the army and law enforcement agencies in Haiti and executed numerous officers as he perceived them as a threat to his regime. To counteract this threat, he created a military force that bore several names. In 1959, his paramilitary force was called the ("Hooded Men"). They were then renamed to (''Civilian Militia''), and after 1962, (''Volunteers of the National Security'', or VSN). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Claude Duvalier
Jean-Claude Duvalier (; 3 July 19514 October 2014), nicknamed "Baby Doc" ( ht, Bebe Dòk), was a Haitian politician who was the President of Haiti from 1971 until he was overthrown by a popular uprising in February 1986. He succeeded his father François "Papa Doc" Duvalier as the ruler of Haiti after his death in 1971. After assuming power, he introduced cosmetic changes to his father's regime and delegated much authority to his advisors. Thousands of Haitians were killed or tortured, and hundreds of thousands fled the country during his presidency. He maintained a notoriously lavish lifestyle (including a state-sponsored US$2million wedding in 1980) while poverty among his people remained the most widespread of any country in the Western Hemisphere. Relations with the United States improved after Duvalier's ascension to the presidency, and later deteriorated under the Carter administration, only to normalize under Ronald Reagan due to the strong anti-communist stance of the Duv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gruel
Gruel is a food consisting of some type of cereal—such as ground oats, wheat, rye, or rice—heated or boiled in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge that may be more often drunk rather than eaten. Historically, gruel has been a staple of the Western diet, especially for peasants. Gruel may be made from millet, hemp, barley, or, in hard times, from chestnut flour or even the less bitter acorns of some oaks. Gruel has historically been associated with feeding the sick and recently weaned children. ''Gruel'' is also a colloquial expression for any watery food of unknown character, e.g., pea soup. Gruel has often been associated with poverty, with negative associations attached to the term in popular culture, as in the Charles Dickens novel '' Oliver Twist''. History Gruel was the staple food of the ancient Greeks, for whom roasted meats were the extraordinary feast that followed sacrifice, even among heroes, and "In practice, bread was a luxury eaten only in towns" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raoul Cédras
Joseph Raoul Cédras (born July 9, 1949) is a Haitian former military officer who was the ''de facto'' ruler of Haiti from 1991 to 1994. Background A mulatto, Cédras was educated in the United States and was a member of the U.S.-trained ''Leopard'' Corps.Whitney, Kathleen Marie (1996), "Sin, Fraph, and the CIA: U.S. Covert Action in Haiti", ''Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas'', Vol. 3, Issue 2 (1996), pp. 303-332. p321 He also trained with the Spanish military. Cédras was chosen by the US and France to be in charge of security for the 1990–91 Haitian general election, and subsequently named Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in early 1991. Under Aristide, Cédras "was one important source for the CIA, providing reports critical of President Aristide." De facto leader of Haiti (1991–1994) Cédras, Lieutenant General in the Forces Armées d'Haïti (FAdH; the Armed Forces of Haiti) at the time, was responsible for the 1991 H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1991 Haitian Coup D'état
The 1991 Haitian coup d'état took place on 29 September 1991, when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, elected eight months earlier in the 1990–91 Haitian general election, was deposed by the Armed Forces of Haiti. Haitian military officers, primarily Army General Raoul Cédras, Army Chief of Staff Philippe Biamby and Chief of the National Police, Michel François led the coup. Aristide was sent into exile, his life only saved by the intervention of US, French and Venezuelan diplomats. Aristide would later return to power in 1994. Background The 1990–91 general election was heralded as the first democratic election in Haiti's history. Aristide, a populist Roman Catholic priest, was the most controversial candidate of his party, the National Front for Change and Democracy (FCND). He was one of the only church figures to speak out against repression during the Duvalier years. However, due to the popularity of his populist Lavalas movement ("the flood" in Haitian Creole), wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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